In its quest to further transform the financial technology landscape, Lynk, NCB’s digital wallet, is moving to expand the list of offerings on its platform pending the addition of a merchant platform.

The fintech service provider which operates a mobile wallet for the Bank of Jamaica’s Jam-Dex digital currency said this latest upgrade will add more efficiency to its growing platform, offering both customers and merchants added convenience. Some of the promised benefits to accompany the new gateway includes the viewing of real-time transaction reporting, automated accounting, payment at online stores, refunding, activity visualisation, among several others.

“We recently improved the user interface and we are next moving to our merchant portal which will unlock for businesses the ability to accept payments from anyone. We have a lot of features that are being unlocked which are really to bring a level of convenience to merchants and consumers when using our app. This is the same level of convenience, accountability and reporting that one would get from the use of a point-of-sale machine,” said Vernon James, chief executive officer (CEO) Lynk, the fintech arm of the NCB Financial Group, speaking ahead of a presentation on the 2022 first-quarter findings for the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce’s Business and Consumer Confidence survey.

“So for our merchants, they can look forward to having less cash or needing less cash to execute their transactions with the public. What we are doing is bringing convenience, security and value to consumers and merchants. The time has been coming for a long while for us to bring more people into the digital space and that is what we are doing,” he added.

The Lynk technology developed to target the country’s unbanked population aims to offer greater levels of financial inclusion. Since its launch in December, the platform to date has onboarded approximately 100,000 customers and over 1,300 micro-merchants following over 220,000 downloads of the app.

Hoping to further tap into the large payment services market, which sees over $10 trillion worth of cash transactions across the population annually and over 50 million at point of sales, James said his entity was even more focused on improving its digital solutions. He said that as the novel coronavirus pandemic pushes more people to utilise digital services and cash gradually loses its place as king, deliberate steps were being taken to get systems ready.

“The digital payment space is evolving and it is exciting; over the next six months to a year we are going to see a whole lot of activities and innovations that will improve the customer experience of payments and in transacting business. Stay tuned, we have a lot more coming. We are well-positioned and sufficiently resourced to drive the change that the country needs to see in the digital space,” James stated.